My YouTube comment on the Salon article: “He is a Narcissist/Sociopath draft dodging tax dodging 6 time bankrupt 3 time married failed rich boy reality tv insulter who calls vets and Killed In Action suckers and losers, Christians are fools and schmucks, calls the news fake and the enemy of the people while he lies endlessly. All of this is true and yet he has a cult, and I know some of them, that will vote for him even though his incompetence has caused the deaths of, by most estimates, over a hundred thousand Americans. The last 4 years have disturbed and depressed me about the future of America and this creature, who is blatantly trying to steal reelection, has damaged the nation for decades to come.”
And after reading the Salon article I asked myself, “Is it really possible the forever trumpers have some kind of psychiatric disorder? All those millions of people?
And then I remembered a picture I came across not long ago of Evita’s funeral.
And now we see the violence beginning:
I was talking with a coworker last night, one of those people I would never think of as a rabid forever trumper, and he made references to the only two people he can stand to listen to on TV as being Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. This, despite his seeming to be fairly moderate in his views. He derided AOC about causing Amazon to abandon their project in New York and I then expressed my view- that it was a headquarters for executives that would do nothing for AOC’s constituents except cost them money due to gentrification. He seemed to take it well. Then he talked about “the riots” and I expressed my view that they were not really riots. He argued they were and I stated a riot generally involves hundreds or even several thousand people and watching the videos it is obvious this is only a few lawbreakers using the protests as cover. And he seemed to take that well also. Interestingly, another coworker, overhearing our conversation, refused to take any directions from me later in the evening. Since we usually work well together this was telling.
We have millions of people that have been conned, and once they are hooked, having invested, or “bought in”, they are extremely unwilling to cut their losses. This is because it is not money they have invested, but emotions and their own self-perception as being smart enough to know what is right and wrong. Part of the game is this loyalty to the cult figure fueled by a persons own self-image and self-esteem. Whatever terminology is used it is essentially about not being humiliated. Many forever trumpers, having expressed their views to the people around them for the last couple years, are afraid they will be seen for the rest of their lives as fools for promoting Trumpism.
Neoliberals have spent hundreds of millions in propaganda and far more in political funding over the last half a century to demonize “socialism.” The left, because of communist regimes being painted as the inevitable end result of socialism, have never been able to effectively reply and the extreme right triumphed in this winning of hearts and minds. The story is not being accurately related to the American people that The New Deal, from the 1930’s all the way up to the early 1980’s, used Imbedded Liberalism as the operating principle, and this system was essentially socialist. Liberalism, the old term for capitalism, was placed inside, or imbedded, in a socialist political system.
The history is fairly clear on this to anyone who takes some hours to read up on it. From the 1870’s all the way up to the crash of 29, the super-rich consistently worked to take over America and make it an Oligarchy (like Russia is right now). The United States reorganized after the civil war toward industry and expansion all the way west. Within a few years the new mega-industries of railroads, fossil fuels, steel, and factory mass production made certain people super-rich. These individuals were immediately identified as a serious threat to the democratic system and the corruption their obscene wealth generated was fought against all through the half a century leading up to the stock market crash. Politicians who were not bought and unions were the main stumbling blocks to those seeking absolute power. Eventually, as it always does, this predatory rule by greed fell apart and The New Deal came into effect.
The Neoliberal movement worked against The New Deal from the start. The failure of soviet communism enabled the demonization of socialism by rebranding it as communism by way of ceaseless propaganda. The left could thus mount no effective defense of The New Deal- which mixed together capitalism and socialism to form the most functional system the world had ever seen. The Reagan Revolution of the 1980’s saw the end of Keynesian Imbedded Liberalism, that is, the end of the New Deal, and wages immediately flattened and have never come back for the middle class. The result has been a slow redistribution of wealth upward to the present situation of astronomical wealth inequality. It is ironic that the Americans in the picture flying their “Socialism Sucks” banner are actually promoting a system that is impoverishing them and is working toward taking away everything “socialist” policies have given them.
Trumpism is a reality TV show featuring no social security, no government medical assistance, and the privatization for profit of all federal safety net programs. The propaganda endlessly promoting Neoliberalism has been the same for the half a century since it began to change America: wealth trickles down, the private sector can do it better, and anything free is satanic communism. Everyone has to pay and pay. And it is of course all a lie. The rich do not pay. They are paid by our labor and we are now exploited by super-corporations as wage slaves. The right is fundamentally pushing one basic theme- the rich not paying taxes or paying a fair wage or pollution being regulated. To them this unrestrained greed is called “freedom.”
In conclusion, U.S. history can be divided into four approximately half century long eras after the initial quarter century of revolution and post-revolution formation up to the war of 1812: in the early 1800’s the industrial revolution kicked in and westward expansion began the first era. This culminated in the end of slavery with the Civil War. The second era was the “gilded age” as never-before-seen-in-history wealth was concentrated in a few individuals and American Democracy fought for existence against a creeping Oligarchy. The third era began when “the free market” collapsed, as they always do, and The New Deal made America great. The fourth era began in 1980 with the Reagan Revolution and we are now experiencing the end of that…or the end of Democracy. It could go either way. Truth.
I am praying for a Green New Deal.
Ice on the Moon 